Ishta’s Companion/Relics of War: Lack of Progress Report Three

We’re still $61.00 short of posting Chapter Sixteen, and what with the holidays, house guests, and health issues (I’ve had a series of colds and bugs for almost a month now), I’m still only partway through writing Chapter Eighteen. This is further complicated by the realization that the ending in my original outline (there’s half a page of outline left to cover) isn’t very good, and I’d like to devise a better one.

But I’m going to finish this, and it probably won’t take too much longer. Posting it all… well, we’ll see, but I’m not optimistic.

I’m going to be doing some traveling, and while I’m taking my computer with me, I probably won’t have time to get all that much work done. If we do get that $61.00 in, I still may not get Chapter Sixteen posted until I get back on the 12th. We’ll see.

A minor bit of Ethshar news: The new edition of Ithanalin’s Restoration is scheduled for June.

A less-definite bit of Ethshar news: I’ve been plotting the next Ethshar novel, Stone Unturned, when Ishta’s Companion is being uncooperative. It’s beginning to feel as if it wants to be three or four separate stories instead of one big one. There would still be a novel with the main plot, but a couple of subplots don’t seem to want to merge in and might wind up as separate novelets, novellas, or even novels in their own right, though they’d still intersect the main story for a couple of chapters. It’ll be interesting to see how it all works out — but this means I probably can’t do it as a serial, even if I wanted to.

Well, however many bits Stone Unturned turns into, I do hope I get to see them all. 🙂 There’s a lot of stuff I still want to know about Ethshar – if only to see if I guessed right. And I like your characters.

Sorry it took so long to get to your comment; I’ve been away, with no internet access, for a week.

Stone Unturned is actually a combination of A Slave of Wizardry, The Wizard’s Garden, an old idea that somehow never made it onto that list called The Demon’s Master, an even older fragment called The Epic Adventures of Pender the Jeweler, and a bunch of new material.

If it fragments, The Demon’s Master will be one of the split-off pieces, and another will be The Petrified Prince, which is some of the all-new material. The rest will probably stay unified, but if it doesn’t, the two parts will be The Wizard’s Garden (probably retitled Lord Landessin’s Gallery), and Pender the Jeweler, with pieces of A Slave of Wizardry in both of them.